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Reflexions on a theological dispute
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
Johann Baptist Metz has broken with this Rahnerian programme for a transcendental theology because of what he calls its ‘tendency to privatization’ (Privatkiemngstendenz). He denies thereby the universality of this transcendental experience from which Rahner builds up his system. This experience can be seen rather as the product of a particular philosophy (which is itself determined by theology) that the individual is always determined by a basic attitude towards ‘Being’, ‘death’, etc., always exists in an enduring relationship to God as ‘horizon’, etc. But these are religious presuppositions and products of a society which assumed man to be ultimately ‘religious’, the only question being whether he would explicitly accept this or deny it. In a non-religious, secular and pluralistic society, these assumptions can no longer be made.
page 6 note 1 No attempt will be made here to decide which position, Rahner's or Metz's, is the more biblical.The future promise of Old Teatament prophecy would seem to coincide neither with the absolute future of transcendental theology, nor with the formal future of political theology.
page 6 note 2 Metz has retraced his steps philosophically.Previously identified with Rahner's assimilation of transcendental philosophy‐e.g. from Kant the question of the a priori’ (K.der R.V.B25), from Hegel the question of the accessibility of the an sich to consciousness (Phenomenologie des Geistes, Meiner s.73), through Husserl's transcendental reduction to Heidegger'r existential ontology (cf.Sein und Zeit146,329)‐Metzhas gone back to another ‘political’ tradition developing from Kant.
page 6 note 3 There is a unity of intention between Rahner and Bultmann, but radical differences in the method and end‐result of their theologies.
page 7 note 1 The following section is largely a summary of various lectures by Metz in the University of MÜnster.
page 10 note 1 An indication of the dominance of Rahner's thought is given from theological publications. Whole series are instigated by him and/or dominated speculatively by his thought or that of his disciples:e.g.Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Sacramenturn Mundi, Handbuch für Pastoraltheologie, Questiones Disputatae, and to some extent, Mysterium Salutis.
page 11 note 1 It would seem that a theological anthropology, because its proper theme is the relation between history and historicity, would be more open than any other speculative theology to the problem of exegesis, i.e. to the problems arising from the gradual assimilation in a changing, growing self‐interpretation by individuals and groups and a people of a his‐torical, evolving, spatio‐temporal Revelation.Certainly Von Rad's Old Testament work seems eminently accessible to a theologian precisely in his transcendental method. Whether it is equally accessible for the political theologian remains to be seen.
page 11 note 2 cf.Max Müller,Existenzphilosophie im geistigen Leben der Cegenwart.(21964).c.V. Ende des Metaphysik.
page 11 note 3 On the present crisis within the Frankfurter Schule, compare the discussion in the Suhrkamp series by Albrecht Wellmer,Kritische Cesellschaftstheorie und Positivismus(1969):also by Bernhard Schafers (ed.),Thesen zur Kritik der Soziologie(1969).
page 11 note 4 There is a bitterness in Adorno's criticism of Heidegger (Lukécz's also) which is inseparably linked to Heidegger's political past:a similar tendency is observable in left‐wing distaste for the ‘fascist’ potentialities of Nietzche's thought.But the latter is now being rehabilitated among Marxist's‐perhaps Heidegger will also help towards the revolution, when it comes.
page 12 note 1 One thinks especially of the works of R. D. Laing in this context (‘political psych‐analysis’)‐e.g. the organic advance in his thought from the existential ontology of neurosis schizophrenia in The Divided Self (Pelican 1965) to the grasp of the revolutionary significance of these in The Politics of Experience(Penguin 1967).On the existential movement in Zen, see the bibliographical reference in Thomas Merton's Zen Masters and Christian Mystics.
page 12 note 2 The political theology of the Catholic ‘New Left’ in Britain, with its connexion to a tradition of literary criticism, could help to overcome the formal abstractness of Metz's theology.
page 12 note 3 This criticism of ‘lack of content’ is made by Fergus Kerr, O.P., in ‘Politics and Theology: Retrospect and Agenda’,New Blackfriars, August 1968,572‐582 (esp. 577).
page 13 note 1 This unrealistic ‘overtaxing’ of the Church in Metz'a programme is criticized by H. Maier, ‘Politische Theologie?’, in Stimmmen der Zeit, Heft 2, February 1969, pp.93‐91:also by Karl Lehmann in Essener Gespräche zum Thema Staat und Kirche (4).
page 14 note 1 Another example of this complementarity would be in eschatology.Without Rahner's hermeneutic for eschatological statements (given in Schriften IV, 401‐428), Metz's dependence on Christian apocalyptic for a necessary ‘utopian’ dimension to theology would be uncritical.Demythologizing and deprivatization go together.
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